I have just moved home and have re connected my old freeview box to my old TV and all is ok. There is also a satalite dish on the wall that the previous owners left. If I purchase a basic freesat box (£35 Argos) can I connect this to the same TV at the same time. FYI I am aware that many channels are on both systems; the TV has 3 scart sockets and I have never had or want any form of pay or subscription TV or HD or digital recording.
Free view is picked up from the aerial and freesat from a dish, so if the dish is a sky dish then all you need is a freesat box and away you go, the freeview box will take up one scart socket and the freesat can take up one of the other two sockets on your tv.
We had sky years ago but decided it wasn't worth the money. We now have a freeview box (which we use to record on) and the freesat box which is the one we usually watch the tv on. It's handy because each has slightly different (but in some cases a little rubbishy) channels, but in certain cases we record 2 things on the freeview and watch another on the freesat at the same time. This doesn't happen too often mind you as the channels do not often offer that many great things at the same time! well worth the money though.
Many thanks thats realy usefull info from both of you and I think I will have both systems. However never having had any dealings with a dish before how can I tell if it will work with freesat and how does the cabeling go for a satalite to the freesat box?
There's no cabling from the satellite to the sat box (you'd need about 22000 kilometres of cable for that!)
Any dish found on the side of a house in the UK will almost certainly work fine with a freesat box, the dish, LNB and cabling are the same for freesat and sky so all you have to do is connect the existing cable to the back of the freesat box and you're good to go.